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Foundational English--incl. preparation for the Canadian Immigration Test.

TOEFL/ IELTS exam preparation.

Business English.

Contact:

For all information inquiries, please send your request by email to:

aleks@englishrightnow.org

To join and become a member:

1. Send an email to the above address letting me know which course of study you are interested in---Basic, Business, or Exam Preparation.

2. ***Press the "PayPal" button at the bottom of this page to make your first payment for the classes.-Every 6th class is:FREE-no charge.***Join in this exciting program right now--and learn all the English that you need. It is right here at our glorious englishrightnow.org

3. I will then email you, giving you complete access to this website, along with further instructions on how to use it effectively to your advantage.

4. All books and past professional exams are downloadable from this site--free for students of englishrightnow.org

We have video
chat, online simultaneous collaboration of documents, audio recordings,videos, and you can download and copy all material from this website, and furthermore, you still have the option to take classes in-person with the teacher--by appointment (New Westminster B.C.).

English:Most widely spoken language

“One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way.” – Frank Smith

Despite slipping behind Mandarin as the world’s most widely spoken
language, English is still the most popular language on the globe, with
1,500 million native and non-native speakers worldwide, and with 60 out
of 196 countries using English as their official language, according to
the Oxford Royale Academy.
It is also the language of diplomacy and the official language spoken
by the European Union, the United Nations, and many Commonwealth
countries.

Jokes :)

B2. Healthy living

adverbs of frequency

Lucy Williams worked in
an
office near the city centre . She usually
went for a walk in the park
during her lunch hour. Nearly every day she saw a very old man who was always
in the park on the same bench. He had
white hair and a long white beard and a very contented expression. She sometimes
nodded to him or said hello and he always smiled back very happily. One
day, she decided to stop and speak to him.
‘Excuse
me,’ said Lucy, ‘I often see
you here. You always
seem very cheerful and you’re never
sick! What’s your secret for
a long and happy life?’
‘My
secret?’ asked the old man, smiling at her ‘I don’t
have a
secret.’
‘But
how often
do you take exercise?’ asked Lucy.
‘I never
take any exercise, young lady.’
‘What about your diet? How often
do you eat fresh fruit and
vegetables?’
‘I hardly ever
eat vegetables.’ he replied, still
smiling, ‘And I smoke almost all the
time.’
‘That’s
amazing!’ said
Lucy. ‘How old are you?’
‘Thirty
five,’ he replied

A "podcast" is an audio file that you can listen to on your computer/cellphone/mp3 player.

English Podcasts

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Video: Passive Voice

In this next video a student is sharing his e-portfolio in preparation for a showcase.

How do we help kids connect with their strengths while being real about core academics?

When we reframe the way we talk about kids, we reframe the way we think about them. Let's not deliver the same idea in a “nicer way,” but push ourselves to keep each child in mind as a whole person rather than reducing them to conventional metrics. This a huge temptation because these metrics dominate current educational discourse.

A Shift

One of multiple ways our school community is shifting towards asset-based communication about students is through holding quarterly student showcases - letting kids speak for themselves!

At our last quarterly showcase, hundreds of family members went into classrooms to talk with students about their learning. Students shared multi-media projects, presentations and other examples of their growth. It was refreshing to hear conversations that included statements of pride from students and families, kids articulating what they’ve learned, and students celebrating each others’ learning.

During the student showcases, our bilingual students are given a platform to share their ability to communicate and create in two or more languages, as opposed to conventional report cards and conferences that systematically frame students in terms of language deficits.

Although this might sound simple, there is a lot of societal pull to move in the other direction - to focus on oversimplified metrics. Instead of reducing the stories of kids and schools to numbers and rankings, let’s move towards a more meaningful narrative.

Learn Grammar through content

A variety of activities will enhance language acquisition. Suggestions
include articles, student presentations, discussions, role plays, field trips
and demonstrations.

In a content-based approach, grammar
still needs to be taught since the need will arise for the students to
communicate using a specific structure (passive voice, for example).
Grammatical accuracy still needs to be part of the hidden agenda of the course,
especially for college-bound students, and it can be hidden
in the readings.

In social studies, learners may hold a mock election or a mock UN debate.
Later on, they can write out their experiences in a journal or as a part of a
follow-up assignment.

A hands-on learning experience will
be more meaningful and go into deep memory. Role-playing is included,
along with work on idioms and listening comprehension using published articles
on the subject.

Context clues are important, and additional helps can be provided by
outlines on the blackboard, visuals, charts, word banks and realia.

The core of the content-based ESL class derives from the subject rather
than the forms of the language. The goal of the class is to use the subject as
a way to increase communicative competence.

English becomes a means of acquiring new information rather than an object
of study.

"ELLs will often learn the social contexts of English long before they
master the elements that they need for learning and conveying their knowledge
of academic content," Virginia
"Jenny" Williams writes. "Academic language can take five to
seven years to acquire at levels that are
needed for a typical classroom in the U.S."

Students may be at the advanced level in the four skills, but they may still
have difficulty with the academic courses if they are taking them concurrently
with the ESL program. Even after passing the TOEFL or other placement test,
they face hurdles when it comes to regular course work with native speakers.

Advanced fluency, the final phase of second-language acquisition, can take
five to seven years to emerge. During this stage, students take on a
near-native ability in the second language when speaking, but academic language
may still be developing.

Content-area readings should allow
students to relate their language learning to the academic subjects they are
studying. As stated in the ACTFL
National Standards: "Making
Connections: Learners build,
reinforce and expand their knowledge of other disciplines while using the
language to develop critical thinking and to solve problems creatively."

Reading and Listening

Why do some English learners struggle with reading and
listening? How can we support them in navigating these receptive language
skills? Let's take a closer look at these two basic language skills.

Having strong receptive skills provides a solid base for
achieving success in the productive skills. Verbal fluency and writing ability
are more tangible for learners and teachers alike. On the other hand, both
reading and listening involve a great deal of internal mental processing on the
part of the student, which can create obstacles when it comes to teaching and
assessment.

Due to their inherent nature, listening and reading pose
distinct challenges.

Verbal language can be difficult to grasp because it
disappears immediately after it is spoken, while written language remains on
the page to be read at one's own pace and reread if necessary. On the other
hand, the gestures of the speaker as well as the tone and intonation of the
voice provide the listener additional information about the speaker's message
and opinion.

Listening involves understanding the meaningful sounds that
comprise spoken language. It is the first skill that's developed by an L1
learner as an infant. Long before speaking his or her first word, a baby has
been surrounded by language in the context of daily life.

Having such a context is an advantage over the typical
classroom environment. As teachers, providing lessons that use props and
regalia and are taught using a contextual format is a way to bridge this gap
for students.

In terms of assessment, keep in mind the significant amount
of time an L1 learner takes to produce accurate language, and do not expect to
gauge comprehension on what a new L2 or L3 student can express verbally.
Written true-false questions, multiple-choice questions, or ticking the word or
sentence heard assessment options that address this issue.

Young learners who lack basic reading skills can demonstrate
their understanding in similar exercises with images instead of words. Older
students who are tentative about the language also relax when they aren't
expected to read in order to complete listening comprehension tasks.

When secondary and high school students were asked about
these two language skills, the general consensus was that they found reading
more difficult when they began learning English. Some cited the difference in
how the letters are pronounced in English as compared to their L1, while others
found that not having sufficient vocabulary kept them from deducing the meaning
of what they had read.

When learners are strong readers in their L1, they can
easily transfer this skill to reading in English. However, if they find it
challenging or their language level isn't high, they will need assistance in
transferring these skills. A good starting point for teachers is determining
the specific weak area or subskill, then helping students build that up.

Some students may be getting stuck at the decoding or word
level and need to expand their vocabulary, while others know many isolated
words but lack understanding of sentence structure and the grammatical links
between sentences. On the discourse level, reading subskills include reading
for gist or skimming, reading for detail, reading for specific information or
scanning and deducing meaning from context.

In reading — and in most cases listening to — a given text,
there are three recommended stages: pre-, during- and after-reading. Key
activities at the "pre-" stage are preteaching unfamiliar vocabulary
and identifying the purpose for reading the text.

"The teacher leads a discussion to draw out students'
prior knowledge of the theme and interjects additional information considered
necessary to an understanding of the text to be read," Vaezi said.
"Moreover, the teacher can explicitly link prior knowledge to important
information in the text."

Vaezi cited several during-reading tips, including:

teaching
readers to be on the watch to predict what is going to happen next in the
text to be able to integrate and combine what has been read with what is
to come

instructing
them to make use of context to guess the meaning of unknown words in a
text

encouraging
them to pause at certain points while reading a text to absorb, sort out
and internalize the material being read

Post-reading activities not only serve to check
comprehension and correct areas of miscomprehension, but they also provide a
prime opportunity to engage students' critical thinking skills and led to
deeper analysis of the text and its significance on a larger scope.

"In the real world, the purpose of reading is not to
memorize an author's point of view or to summarize text content, but rather to
see into another mind, or to mesh new information into what one already
knows," Vaezi said.

Want a better job?

Employers across all sectors and business sizes will offer higher salaries and promotions to those fluent in the English language, new research by the Cambridge English Language Assessment (Cambridge English) and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) shows.

Better salary packages are found to be most common in non-native English-speaking countries like Brazil and China, which are coincidentally the same nations suffering from some of the biggest English skills gap.

“We live in an increasingly connected world and communication is an important part in this process. [People who] can communicate are more likely to grow professionally and personally,” Mário Magalhães, a production engineer at GGMR, Brazil, said in the report.

The findings are based on data from 5,373 employers in 38 countries that completed the annual QS Global Employer Survey, and insights from industry experts at Cambridge English.

Globally, job applicants are not meeting the level of mastery in the English language that employers want. This results in a “40 percent skills gap” between the desired level of English mastery and the language skills actually available, regardless of company size, according to Blandine Bastié, Cambridge English’s Country Head for UK and Ireland at Cambridge English.

The biggest skills disconnect are in internal-facing roles such as Human Resources and Personnel, Accounting and Finance, Production and Logistics, as well as in non native-English speaking countries such as China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

By contrast, the gap is lowest in middle and top management as well as in countries where English is an official language (e.g. Singapore and India).

Applicants able to close this English language skills gap can look forward to heftier starting packages and tend to climb faster up the corporate ladder. A total of 46 percent of employers say they will award bigger salary increases to those in this group as well.

For employers like Japan’s ITOCHU Corporation, English is an important business tool, a sentiment shared by the majority of the employers across the globe. “The English language requirements of our staff can only increase in the next 10 years, because our business will depend more and more on global business,” Natsuki Segawa, Manager, Aerospace Systems, ITOCHU Corporation, Japan said

An overwhelming number of employers (95 percent) in non-native English-speaking countries find such skills are vital. Nurbek Achilov, the founder of Kazakhstan’s G-Global Development Community, calls it the language of ‘business, science, etiquette and innovations”.

Employees should know how to read, write, speak and understand the language well; reading is identified as the most vital skill in 11 industries since English is the lingua franca of many international journals and contracts. Second to reading is fluency in conversing in English, a skill identified as crucial in about nine industries, especially those requiring heavy social interaction such as travel, leisure and hospitality. “They should also practice speaking the language as much as possible so that they can impress at the interview stage, and focus on reading and writing for more advanced technical roles.”

France: English and Jobs

One in three French workers feel their lack of English has cost them job opportunities, a survey has found.

Parlez vous anglais?

French people feel that they've missed out at work due to their poor level of English, according to a new survey of English language students carried out by the ABA English school.

Just under one third of all age groups believe language barriers impeded their ability to rise up through the ranks at work, the survey found.

The stats were even higher among those aged 20 to 45, with 55 percent of respondents saying they felt their lack of language skills meant they missed a chance to boost their professional development.

Meanwhile 66 percent of respondents felt that English was becoming increasingly important in the French workplace.

As for why English learners from France were taking lessons, 47 percent of the 20-45-year-olds said they were doing it for work, 23 percent for personal development, 19 percent for travel, and the rest for family or studies.

Study abroad: What are English Language Tests

New Delhi: If you are planning to study abroad, just applying to the college of your choice is not enough. There are other requirements which you must fulfill in order to secure a place in a university abroad. One of the essential requirements is a valid score card of an accepted English Language Test. For Indian students, good score in an English language proficiency test is a must to apply at all major foreign universities in USA, UK, Australia, Canada and other English speaking countries. Some of the major English language proficiency tests which are conducted in India are listed here.

As an applicant to a foreign university you must enquire more about these exams and find out which exam's score is accepted at the university of your choice.

IELTS: The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) is a test taken by people who intend to study or work in a country where English is the language of communication.

IELTS is available in two versions - Academic and General Training. Academic IELTS is for those who apply for higher education or professional registration. General Training is for those who migrate to Australia, Canada and the UK or apply for secondary education, training programmes, and work experience in an English-speaking environment.

IELTS score is accepted by more than 10,000 institutes and training organizations across the world.

TOEFL: TOEFL is one of the most popular English-language test accepted by more than 9000colleges, universities, and agencies in more than 130 countries Australia, Canada, UK, and USA.

The registration for TOEFL goes on throughout the year and there are almost 50 tests conducted in a year.

CAE: Cambridge English: Advaced (CAE) is another English-language test which is accepted as a proof of English language ability. This test is accepted by 100% universities in UK.

The test dates are available throughout the year. There are 2800 test centres in 130 countries. The exam is both paper-based and computer based.

ESL Skills in Business

Rather
than just learning about grammar or words, ESL students must actually use the
language to learn new material related to their future dealings in the business
world. The core material should be authentic, with curriculum taken from the
subject matter, so students use English as a tool to learn new information and
interact with it, and the topics should fit the needs of the students.

Therefore,
as Pardess Mitchell points out, the instruction
needs to be relevant to the learner's future career: "It is important to
show students what they are learning is relevant to life today, to connect
concepts learned in class to the 'real world' and to allow students to reflect
on these matters. The goal is to encourage students to think about a particular
topic and apply it to their life, thus making the information useful."

At englishrightnow.org, we use “real-world” material in the
instruction of Business English.

This ensures that students will be able to connect concepts
from the classroom to the “life today” as it pertains to the business world J

The goal at englishrightnow.org is to prepare students for
the “real world,” along with a good grounding in the practical day-to-day usage
of English.

Canadian Refugees and English

You can tap the brakes on your car or go on a break from work; English is a
language with a lot of nuance.

With Syrian refugees calling Saskatchewan home, Myrina Rutten-James said it
is important people have patience when language barriers come into play. She
teaches English as an Additional Language at the University of Regina.

"Often it takes about two years just to become fairly proficient [in
English], to be able to do the day-to-day tasks that you need to do,"
Rutten-James said on CBC's Afternoon Edition.

"But research shows it takes between four and seven years of full-time
immersion to really understand the language and be able to use it to the level
of certainty that people would like."

She explained idiomatic expressions like "I'm over the hill" can
be very troublesome for people learning the language. Another difficulty is
phrasal verbs like "not cut out for" or "puts up with a
lot".

It's not just how people use the language that make it difficult to pick up.

"There are so many things that make it complicated for someone to learn
a language, their motivation, their goals, access to the second language before
they arrive… current life situations," she said.

For people trying to learn English, it's important to recognize that it
is a lifelong process.

"It's very difficult to pick up everything you need to learn in a short
period of time, they need to be patient with themselves," she said.

"Learning English can be a very frustrating experience and so you want
to be mindful of the larger picture and what it is that you want in the long
term."

·Have the
person you are trying to help restate what you said, instead of saying "do
you understand?"

·Ask them specific questions so you can gauge
whether or not they understood what you told them.

Deeper English

Language learning seeks depth

Preparing students for an increasingly global workforce means teaching them not only how to speak a second language,
but how to think critically in that language and have a deep
understanding of the culture and geography that are embedded in it.

Increases in rigor and depth are a focus of this year’s American
Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) conference, which
will be held Nov. 20 to 22 in San Diego.

“I think people are beginning to see the need for world language
proficiency at a higher level than has been produced,” says ACTFL
President Jacqueline Van Houten, also a world languages specialist at
Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky.

The conference will feature hundreds of presentations and workshops
over several days, including many focused on updates to ACTFL’s
World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages. The revisions, first
released in 2013, have driven subtle but important shifts in classroom
practices.

Changing standards

The language standards set goals in five areas: communication, cultures, connections, comparisons and communities.

Prior to the update, students were expected to “engage in
conversation, provide and obtain information, express feelings and
emotions, and exchange opinions” in a foreign language. Now, the
standards call for students to “interact and negotiate meaning” as well
as share information, feelings and opinions.

In the past, when a few students were asked to talk about their day
in a foreign language, their classmates could sit and listen politely,
says Paul Sandrock, director of education at ACTFL and a conference
presenter. Now, students should be asked to decide, for example, who had
a busier day, which requires debate and making value judgments.

Students should now learn not only to understand and interpret
language, but to analyze it—using higher-level thinking skills to
discuss and debate meaning rather than focusing simply on the ability to
translate content word for word.

Another way to help students develop abilities like critical thinking
in another language is to look at the 12 skills for college and career
readiness laid out by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21).

Then, teachers should choose one skill that each language lesson will
target and build a lesson or student project that not only teaches
language skills but asks students to demonstrate P21 skills like problem
solving, says an ACTFL presenter Lauren Rosen, director of
Collaborative Language at the University of Wisconsin.

Teachers can go one step further by incorporating technologies that
can help foster those skills. With programs like Google Hangouts,
students can talk to their peers in other countries. They can also use
smartphones to take pictures and create presentations that demonstrate
vocabulary skills, Rosen says.

English: The Universal Language of Science

The vast
majority of scientific papers today are published in English. What gets lost
when other languages get left out?

Newton’s Principia
Mathematica was written in Latin; Einstein’s first influential papers were
written in German; Marie Curie’s work was published in French. Yet today, most
scientific research around the world is published in a single language,
English.

Since the
middle of the last century, things have shifted in the global scientific
community. English is now so prevalent that in some non-English speaking
countries, like Germany, France, and Spain, English-language academic papers outnumber
publications in the country’s own language several times over. In the
Netherlands, one of the more extreme examples, this ratio is an astonishing 40
to 1.

A 2012 study from the scientific-research publication Research
Trends examined articles collected by SCOPUS, the world’s largest database
for peer-reviewed journals. To qualify for inclusion in SCOPUS, a journal
published in a language other than English must at the very least include
English abstracts; of the more than 21,000 articles from 239 countries
currently in the database, the study found that 80 percent were written
entirely in English. Zeroing in on eight countries that produce a high number of
scientific journals, the study also found that the ratio of English to
non-English articles in the past few years had increased or remained stable in
all but one.

In short,
scientists who want to produce influential, globally recognized work most
likely need to publish in English—which means they’ll also likely have to
attend English-language conferences, read English-language papers, and have
English-language discussions. In a 2005 case
study of Korean scientists living in the U.K., the researcher Kumju
Hwang, then at the University of Leeds, wrote: “The reason that [non-native
English-speaking scientists] have to use English, at a cost of extra time and
effort, is closely related to their continued efforts to be recognized as
having internationally compatible quality and to gain the highest possible
reputation.”

Listenig: The First Step...

In his insightful book, The Rights of the Reader, Daniel Pennac
comments: “When someone reads aloud, they raise you to the level of the book.
They give you reading as a gift.”

People who love reading know the precise value of that gift. But there are
those who cannot read, both children and adults – and they should be remembered
this September, in Literacy and Heritage Month.

In days gone by, storytelling and, later, reading aloud was common practice.

Listening brought its own pleasures: the first lines of a compelling story
anticipated thrills like the “Ntunjambili” chant, opening the
sheltering rock to fleeing, terrified children, or the call of “Open Sesame”,
revealing the cave in which the 40 thieves’ glittering treasure lay.

This was how substantial learning took place. History, values and knowledge
were shared. In Mesopotamia, just 6 000 years ago, the few who could read
were called scribes rather than readers, surmises Alberto Manguel in A
History of Reading, to emphasise the “greatest gift” of “having access to
the archives of human memory and rescuing from the past the voice of our
experience”.

Today, many of us are entranced by the vast visual world of digital stories.
But would the thousands of children who struggle through the education system
benefit from listening to them? More specifically, for children learning to
read, what is the significance of hearing well-told and well-read stories?

A clear answer may elude many parents, teachers and librarians, and there
have been few magnificent storybooks published in languages that most local
young children and their families speak. The pervasive insistence that children
learning English must learn in English as soon as possible does not help to
change this situation. Nor does the way in which “skills-based” teaching
methods for initial literacy tend to be prioritised over nurturing an interest
in and a love of stories and reading.

But listening to stories is indeed significant for learning to read.
Comprehension and vocabulary grow strong in children who have stories told and
read aloud to them.

For several decades research has confirmed this, as well as the fact that
knowledge of story structure predicts children’s later general reading success.

Of course, learning to read cannot happen without close encounters with the
mechanics of print, but it’s is far easier if healthy story language roots have
already embedded themselves in fertile minds.

When story time involves children and adults poring over words and
illustrations together, crucial concepts relating to print become integral to
the powerful process – even though much of this learning may go unnoticed.

But when children don’t have such experiences, and struggle to make sense of
what they’re learning, we often attribute this to their need to be taught
particular skills rather than appreciating their need for linguistically and
imaginatively rich input.

Stories chosen for interest rather than for the attainment of a particular
reading level challenge and expand children’s intelligence as they explore
exciting ways of being and of expressing themselves. Without bidding, they
incorporate them into their play and other activities. And, being finely tuned
to our expectations of them, when we show faith in their power to grapple with
the big ideas and emotions in the stories they hear from us, they will often
surprise and delight us with their capabilities.

Videos in natural English

A new proposal from the
ruling Popular Party could see Spain say adios to the practice of dubbing
foreign programmes on television as a way of improving the nation's English
proficiency.

Spaniards lag far behind their Scandinavian, German and
Dutch cousins when it comes to English proficiency, but they could soon be
shooting up the EU English league tables if one election proposal comes to
fruition.

The conservative Popular Party (PP) led by Spanish Prime
Minister Mariano Rajoy want a part of all television programming in Spain to be
emitted in the original version, getting rid of dubbing and broadcasting with
subtitles instead.

English first

swissinfo.ch and agencies. Sep 28, 2015 - 16:27

Linguistic divide

Survey shows
Swiss youth struggle with national language learning

Young Swiss struggle to learn other national
languages at a sufficient level for the classroom and the workplace, according
to a national study on multiculturalism from the perspective of the country’s
youth.

The 2015 Swiss Federal Survey of Adolescents found that fewer than a quarter
of the young respondents living in the French-speaking part of the country
found it interesting to learn German in school, with the feeling reciprocated
in German-speaking Switzerland.

And the low interest level translates into students’ skills. Just 23% of youth
from the French and Italian-speaking parts of the country can speak German at a
basic conversational level, while 21.9% of German speakers said they don’t know
any French.

English, however, enjoys more popularity among young
people, with the majority of survey respondents saying they could speak English
well or very well.

Although English is not one
of Switzerland’s four national languages, it is the lingua franca of most of
the international companies headquartered in the country. A new programme on
Swiss soil is training their future workforces, almost exclusively in English.

Pauses

Pauses can make or break a
conversation

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150930110555.htm

Date: September
30, 2015

Source: University
of Gothenburg

Summary: Long
pauses can make speech difficult to understand, but short pauses can be highly
beneficial, according to linguistics research.

Long pauses can make speech difficult to understand, but short
pauses can be highly beneficial. This is shown in a new doctoral thesis in
linguistics from the University of Gothenburg.

When we speak we don't. Pause. After. Each. Word. Instead we pause between
longer utterances ‒ sometimes to breathe, sometimes to think and sometimes to
see if somebody else wants to say something. We usually don't even notice the
pauses, but if a pause feels a bit too long we start wondering what is going
on.

Kristina Lundholm Fors has explored what decides whether the duration of a
pause in speech is perceived as normal or as uncomfortably long. She finds that
we tend to adapt our pauses to our conversation partner -- when the other
person uses longer pauses we follow along and do the same thing, and vice
versa.

'This way we learn what a normal pause is for the person we are talking to,
in that particular conversation,' says Lundholm Fors.

Lundholm Fors used eye tracking to study the processing of sentences with
long pauses, sentences containing pauses of typical duration and sentences
without pauses. Her results show that sentences with unusually long pauses tend
to be more difficult to process. The long pauses in her study were four seconds
long.

'Four seconds doesn't sound like a long time, but when you are talking to
somebody it can feel like an eternity. A typical pause in speech lasts only
about a quarter to half a second.'

So, long pauses can affect communication negatively, but they can also have
a positive effect if they are not too long. After the eye tracking study, the
test subjects were asked to indicate which sentences they had heard during the
experiment. The sentences that contained a half second pause turned out to be
significantly easier to understand than sentences that lacked pauses and
sentences that contained an unusually long pause.

Pauses are a natural part of speech, and learning more about them can help
us understand how the participants in a conversation take turns talking.
Lundholm Fors' research shows that pauses in speech are not distributed
randomly; instead, the use of them follows a distinct pattern.

'This means that when we talk to other people, we pretty much know when
there's going to be a pause, and this is information we can use as we prepare to
say something,' she says.

The results of Lundholm Fors' doctoral thesis can contribute to better
modelling of pauses in speech -- models that in turn can be used in the
development of systems for communication between humans and computers.

'Since the pauses are important for the processing of information, more
natural use of pauses in computerised speech can contribute to improved
understanding. The pausation models can also be useful in the evaluation of
individuals with various disabilities affecting the ability to speak and
communicate,' she says.

Dual Language Books

The idea is simple: Use a book printed in both English and in
a child’s mother tongue to help that child learn English.

“It used to be a widely held belief that if you’re a newcomer to Canada,
you need to stop speaking your language and immerse yourself in English,” said
Jayashree Ramaswami, an English-as-a-second-language consultant with Edmonton
Public Schools.

“In the last 20 years, there’s lots of research that’s resulted in
a change in how English language learners are educated. What has been proven is
that building on their home language is most important.”

As Edmonton schools work with increasing numbers of English
language learners, educators employ different techniques to improve their
skills. A dual language book prints a story in two languages on the pages.
Some of the books are popular Canadian classics, and others are
folk tales from different countries.

At Jackson Heights School in Mill Woods, Ramaswami has supported
teachers in a project where students create their own dual language books,
based around a “family treasure” from a student’s home. The books become about
identity, family history and language.

They also open a door for parents who don’t have strong English
skills to participate in a school activity. The parents might translate their
child’s book or come in to read it.

“All children love when their parents are able to participate … And
the research has shown that when parents engage in learning, their achievement
is higher,” said Ramaswami.

Jackson Heights teacher Pam Schenk has used the family treasure
books to introduce new languages into her classroom. Students have been
delighted to learn other languages and proud to hear their native tongue
in the classroom.

“It brings these communities in to the school system and says
they’re gifts and skills with another language are important,” Schenk said.

More than any other foreign language,
European youths learn English

The European Union is awash with languages.
There are 24 official languages in the EU and more than 60 indigenous regional
or minority languages. Despite this linguistic diversity, European students
study one foreign language far more than any other: English.

Roughly three-quarters (77%) of primary
school students in the EU learn English as a foreign language, according to
data from Eurostat.
This includes all or nearly all young students in Austria, Malta, Italy, Spain
and Cyprus.

By comparison, German and French, the next
most popular foreign languages, were studied by only 3.2% and 3% of EU primary
school students, respectively.

Luxembourg and Belgium, each with three
official languages, have the lowest share of primary school pupils studying
English as a foreign language. In both countries, students frequently study one
of the official languages, typically French or German, instead of English.

Learning English has been growing more popular in EU
nations, with the share of young students studying English as a foreign
language more than doubling from just 35% in 2000. Meanwhile, the share of
young students studying French and German has remained below 15%. Governments
(and parents) may have their eye on preparing students for a global economy in
which English is seen as the dominant
language.

While most European students are introduced
to English in primary school, learning English is even more popular among those
in upper secondary school (roughly equivalent to U.S. high school). More than
nine-in-ten upper-secondary students (94%) in the EU learn English, compared
with fewer than a quarter who learn French (24%), German (20%) or Spanish
(18%).

IELTS Results Withheld

English exam body withholds results from 350
Chinese students over violations

News follows complaints that IELTS
results were being delayed by ‘routine checks’

About 350 Chinese students who have taken the International English
Language Testing System (IELTS) examination since July have had their results
“withheld permanently”, because the testing authority believes they have
violated its rules, mainland news portal Thepapern.cn reported.

Over the past few months, many students in Shanghai, Nanjing, Changsha and
Chengdu have complained that their IELTS results were being delayed by routine
checks and some said the move had affected their applications for visas or
overseas universities.

In a statement to the news website, IELTS said it took the responsibility of
providing test results very seriously. Results were withheld only in cases
where there was strong evidence to suggest the candidates had not complied with
IELTS regulations, it said.

“In these cases, we are unable to
guarantee that their result is a true reflection of their English language
skills,” it said.

It declined to comment further, citing confidentiality, but test reference
books containing the IELTS questions and answers are commonly sold in the
mainland, allowing dishonest students to cheat.

Thanks to the rising popularity of studying abroad among Chinese students,
more and more people are taking part in the IELTS. Last year, 600,000 mainland
students sat the test, more than one fifth of all the candidates for the
examination worldwide.

In these cases, we are unable to guarantee that their result
is a true reflection of their English language skills

IELTS

An unnamed agent who advises mainland students said on his WeChat account
that a large number of candidates who attended the IELTS test on July 25 had
been targeted by the checks. He said these students were probably those whose
scores improved significantly in a short time, or had an extreme imbalance in
performance levels in the four sections of the test. But there were also some
instances where the results of all students in a particular class were being
checked.

“I estimate half the students who got a 7 score in any of the four sections
were chosen [for checks],” he said.

According to the agent, such large scale checks on mainland students by the
IELTS authority had taken place every year for the past few years.

The Brain and Learning

As travel experiences go, there are few things as satisfying as
ordering a meal in a foreign language. But while the practical and
social aspects are obvious, multilingualism also has a transformative
effect on the brain – improving brain power and changing the way we see
the world.

Read on for an illustrated journey on how language affects the brain!

How Learning Languages Affects Our Brain [Infographic] [Infographic] by the team at Sunbelt Staffing

Learning Foundational English

Our teaching approach at "Englishrightnow.org," is to bring together the "Canadian Language Benchmarks" (CLBs), communicative competence, critical thinking and math skills, and employability skills through a variety of tasks and activities that will only enrich the students appreciation for the English language.

All four skill areas are covered; listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

This is the Canadian Immigration English Test.

Learning Business English

Lesson One:

1. Prezumes: Resumes with Pizzazz.

2. Job Centre role play.

3. Financial Terminology Quiz.

Please go to "Class Announcements", in the sidebar to the left,for full details.

TOEFL and IELTS Exam Preparation

After sufficient work has been done, I shall be giving students real TOEFL, or IELTS practice exams, mark the exams, and then give follow-up help to the students as is deemed necessary.

It should be noted that the skills studied in either TOEFL or IELTS are really interchangeable as each section comprehensively treats language skills that are necessary for all students.

Recent Announcements

Financial Terminology QuizThis is a multiple choice-fill in the blank- for thirty different situations.Students may download this quiz from "Forms and Docs".
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Posted Aug 9, 2014, 7:37 PM by Aleks Djosich

First Business ClassPlease be sure to study: 1. Business Lesson One, 2.How to Write a Hamburger Essay, and 3. Developing Your Writing Style.Optionally: You can listen to our "Business Podcasts ...
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